We’re back and breaking new records here on the ERRR. Firstly, this is the first time that we’ve released an ERRR episode after only a fortnight, rather than a month. And secondly, this is the first return interview for the ERRR. In this episode we’ll be speaking again for the flippin fantastic, Mr. Craig Barton. As mentioned in Episode 20a, Craig is the author of the wonderful book ‘How I Wish I’d Taught Maths’, the creator of a whole host of fantastic maths teaching websites such as diagnostic questions and same surface, different deep, and a world renowned education podcast, amongst many other things.

If you haven’t caught his podcast as yet I highly recommend the episodes with Dylan Wiliam, Robert and Elizabeth Bjork, and Tom Sherrington. Or if you haven’t had enough of my voice you could dig up the episode in which Craig interviews me about my reflections upon learning to teach, and teaching to learn..

Last ERRR episode with Craig we spoke all about knowledge vs. skills, explicit instruction, and in a whole heap of detail about diagnostic questions. In this second discussion we start off with a discussion about both mistakes and misconceptions. What’s the difference between these two things, and how should we deal with each in the classroom? From there we move onto tests, tests, tests. Craig tells us all about the testing effect and what a revelation it was for his teaching when he learnt about the power of this form of learning. Building on the testing effect I ask Craig to go into detail about the Quiz-Homework-Quiz combination that he wrote about in his book, and ask how it’s going 6 months on. And just as a hint, you’re going to hear some real world firsts in this part of the interview! From there we discuss key things to keep in mind when organising exam revision and then onto how to create change at the school level. This was probably one of my favourite parts of the interview as Craig talks about some of the hard, and valuable, lessons he’s learnt about creating change at the school, department, and even the classroom level.

We wind up with Craig sharing what he’s changed his mind about since the book came out. And I also ask him how he’s handled the challenge of managing relationships with mathematics teachers in situations when he feels that his teaching direction has grown apart from theirs over the past few years. I ask Craig what advice he would give to his first year teacher self, and we finish on a big 6 that Craig shares. 3 of his favourite blogs and edu-resource sources for all, then 3 more that he anticipates his listeners may not have hear of before!

As you can tell from that intro it’s a mammoth interview and I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did!

Links mentioned in the show

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